Commentary
- Arms & Security Project

Daniel May’s essay in the most recent issue of The Nation, “How to Revive the Peace Movement in the Trump Era,” has stirred up a lot of conversation on the left. In the wake of Trump’s election, May argued, “we need a movement that can speak to the anger that so many Americans feel toward the corporate powers that dominate our politics. Such a movement would expose how militarism is not immune to that influence but is particularly beholden to it.” Here we publish responses to May’s argument from five peace advocates.... Read More »

The Trump administration on Thursday provided an outline of its first budget, a proposal that will dramatically reshape how the United States spends money on national security and defense. There is no question that the United States’ security spending patterns need to be rebalanced to better address urgent security challenges. The Trump budget will not do that... Read More »

Let’s think about the logic of it all for a moment. The 2016 Pentagon budget came in at just over $600 billion and that royal sum, larger than the combined military investments of the next seven countries, was hardly the full measure of the money U.S. taxpayers spent on what we like to call “national security.” Add everything in -- including funding for the Department of Homeland Security and for veterans affairs -- and you’re approaching a trillion dollars annually, according to the Project on Government Oversight. No other country spends anything faintly like it, which means the United States has a military that, by any normal measure, is unmatched on planet Earth... Read More »

President Trump’s choice of H.R. McMaster to replace Michael Flynn as his national security advisor has elicited glowing words and sighs of relief among experienced foreign policy hands and mainstream journalists alike, and rightly so... Read More »

Members of Congress have a hard time agreeing on virtually anything, and they’re already butting heads with the new president. But one issue should unite them: a new initiative to shrink the Pentagon’s massive overhead... Read More »

Last Friday, Donald Trump made his first visit to the Pentagon where he spoke of signing an order to begin “a great rebuilding of the armed services of the United States,” something he’s been advocating for quite a while. As TomDispatch regular Bill Hartung indicates today, this will mean a massive surge in federal dollars pouring into the abyss of the Pentagon, which has shown itself quite capable of absorbing such moneys in the past and seems to lack the slightest ability to account for what’s done with them. (The Pentagon has never even managed to pass an audit.) We already know that this will mean more troops, more ships, more planes, and as a draft executive order for the new president put it, “a desire to invest in a host of military capabilities, including Special Operations forces and nuclear weapons.”... Read More »

At over $600 billion a year and counting, the Pentagon already receives significantly more than its fair share of federal funds. If President Donald Trump has his way, though, that will prove a sum for pikers and misers. He and his team are now promising that spending on defense and homeland security will increase dramatically in the years to come, even as domestic programs are slashed and entire civilian agencies shuttered... Read More »

Over the past month, president-elect Donald Trump has repeatedly spoken out against Pentagon waste, in what one analyst has described as “taking down the military-industrial complex, one tweet at a time.”... Read More »

In the wake of President Donald Trump’s yearning for a military parade, here are two questions I would like to ask: How long will we watch Congress increase military spending by the billions while slashing social programs and sabotaging safety nets for children and the elderly before we ask, “Who and what is our military really fighting for?”...Read More »